OUR OPINION: One year later: Responsibility for a life

As we reflect on the year since the Boston Marathon bombing, we think about lessons remembered, specifically the Chinese proverb, “He who saves a life is responsible for it.”

In many ways, it’s hard to believe it’s been a year since the Boston Marathon bombing. Partly because the images and stories from that day have been ever present. We cover them regularly in our paper, yes, but because we and our friends and families were directly involved, April 15, 2013, is not simply our past but our present.

In preparing for this solemn day, much has been made about lessons learned. Today isn’t the day to discuss the perpetrators of the bombing or second-guess the response. This day belongs to us.

As we reflect on the year since the Boston Marathon bombing, we think more about lessons remembered, specifically the Chinese proverb, “He who saves a life is responsible for it.”

Never has that been more true.

Thousands of stories of heroic compassion have emerged in the days since the bombing. One of the iconic images, taken by MetroWest Daily News photographer Ken McGagh, is of Boston Firefighter Jimmy Plourde carrying bombing victim Victoria McGrath. In it, a colorful scarf is tied off just below McGrath’s left knee, her legs are bloodied, one black shoe is missing and her face burrows into Plourde’s shoulder as her arms cling to him for dear life. Moments before, Bruce Mendelsohn had tied the tourniquet around McGrath’s leg, saving her from bleeding out after a piece of shrapnel had severed an artery.

We think of Quincy’s Bill Dockham, a nurse who volunteered to staff a medical tent just 50 feet from the finish line. After the bombs went off, he stepped outside and saw Jeff Bauman, who lost both legs to the bombs. Dockham said his instinct was to run, to save himself, but his heart overran his head and he stayed. For what seemed like hours, he treated those who had lost limbs and others bleeding from shrapnel wounds.

There’s Carlos Arredondo, a Gold Star father who lost one son to a sniper in Iraq and another to suicide, enough to destroy a lesser man. For a time, it may have destroyed Arredondo. When the Marines came to his house to notify Arredondo his son was dead, he set himself and their truck on fire. But marathon day, he leaped across a fence and comforted Bauman as a another man tied tourniquets around the man’s thighs. Together, they pushed Bauman in a wheelchair to a waiting ambulance and saved his life. Bauman is expecting his first child this summer.

There were the off-duty police officers, firefighters, like Don Gazerro of Brockton, veterans fresh from war, paramedics, doctors, nurses, like Mara Hines of Marshfield, all there to run or volunteer or cheer on another, but who instead went to work saving untold lives.

What many of these people have in common is a deep and abiding connection to those they saved.

Over these 12 months, we’ve heard the stories of how heroes and victims have been reunited in hospitals and rehabilitation centers. Some of these reunions were filmed, others were deeply private. Many of those same people who ran toward the injured, not knowing if there were more bombs ready to detonate, will return this year to volunteer their time and expertise. Many of the victims will be there too, proof that their will is stronger than those who sought to destroy them.

It’s true that those who saved a life that day are responsible for it. But it’s just as true that those who were saved have helped their rescuers by proving to them that their presence made a difference in countless lives, and to our nation. Their mercy proved stronger than any menace.

In preparing to return to the medical tent this year, Dockham said it best, “I believe I was there for a reason.”